Had a fun time on Friday calling up other cities and telling them how many public records requests the City of Bainbridge Island receives.

Best (printable) reaction was from the Poulsbo deputy city clerk: “Oh my god, that’s a huge amount!”

I got an even better exclamation from Mercer Island’s city attorney, but (after some pleading on her part), I agreed not to put in print. She felt it unbecoming of a person in her station. Her followup comment echoed Poulsbo reaction.

Fact is, Bainbridge residents are flooding City Hall with five times as many public records requests as comparable cities. And many are so complex that it takes staff days of digging to find and compile the requested info.

Read all about it here.

The Kitsap County Coroner’s Office has identified the Poulsbo man who died at the Bainbridge ferry terminal Thursday morning as 45-year-old Bryan S. Merrell.

The coroner’s office also confirmed that Merrell died of a heart attack.

Merrell collapsed on the terminal’s walk-on loading ramp shortly before the 7:05 a.m. sailing to Seattle. Ferry riders called 911 at 6:54 a.m. to report Merrell’s condition.

“It was rush hour so there were a lot of commuters there with him,” Bainbridge Island Fire Department Assistant Chief of Operations Luke Carpenter said.

Emergency workers tried CPR for about an hour before Merrell was pronounced dead at the scene.

Foot passengers were rerouted to the auto loading deck. The ferry was delayed a few minutes, according to Bainbridge police.

The coroner’s office on Friday said Merrell was aged 45 rather than 46, as had been earlier reported by emergency responders.

A marathon nine-hour City Council meeting ended with the decision to cut another $3.55 million from an ever-slimming budget.

Most of the cost savings will come from surplus property sales and staffing reductions.

Another $1 million in cuts have yet to be decided. The council put off a decision on possible reduced support for community organizations.

Read my story here.

Municipal government expert Carl Neu will discuss the differences between mayor- and manager-led cities at the Bainbridge High School Commons on March 31.

Bainbridge voters will decide on May 19 whether to swap the city’s elected mayor position for a city manager hired by the City Council.

Neu has worked with over 600 local and state government entities since 1976. As a consultant, he has focused on strategic leadership-building, policy development, long-range planning and elected official teamwork skills.

Neu’s visit is sponsored by the Bainbridge Resources Group. His discussion at BHS begins at 7 p.m.

….secret Irish Republican Army outpost?

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

This week, a skatboarder swooped onto Olympic Drive for a head-on collision with a northbound car. The helmetless skateboarder hit the grill, was thrown onto the the windshield and rolled over the roof. Injures: little more than a sore sore neck and leg. Don’t tell your kids. They’ll bring this story up every time you nag them about wearing helmets and knee pads.

Also this week, a rash of car break-ins in the North Madison area. Vehicle owner’s manuals are apparently a hot item on the black market.

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Islander columnist Becky Fox Marshall entered the journalism world in the era of Woodward and Bernstein. Now, some of the best reporting is coming from Comedy Central and most people only hunger for tasty little morsels of news rather than full meal deals.

Read Marshall’s column below…

Industries and professions come and go with the times. It is part of the march of time. The iceman no longer cometh, because we have freezers in our houses. Farriers are few, and exist mostly for girls who ride in horse shows, rather than serving as a critical cog in the wheel of commerce. It’s a painful transition. It’s even more painful when it’s an industry to which you’ve devoted most of your working life, and surreal to watch it peak and fizzle within your lifetime. It’s downright scary when the industry is a cornerstone of democracy.

I speak, of course, of the demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and likely, The Seattle Times. Seattle a no-traditional-newspaper town? How can that be? Last week, a list of 10 newspapers circulated in the surviving media as in their death throes – newspapers in the cities of Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Miami, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Fort Worth and Cleveland. And while many in the media believed that community newspapers were not threatened, we on Bainbridge Island have seen drastic changes in our local newspapers.

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